Good songwriters?

Jus to get back on topic..a couple of words about great songwriting, if I may ...............seein as how the various lists above are justabout completely predictable (,,,john lennon?? jimi hendrix?? pink floyd?? gag ....enough already...alot has happened since then...)

Here are a few lesser knowns:

A brilliant New Orleans band that writes half boring cliche hardcore/grindcore and half absolutely heart stoppingly beautiful and emotional wrenching music: Crowbar (90s).

Easily the most poetic and brilliant lyrics of our time: Only Living Witness of post boston hardcore fame. Jonah Jenkins, the lead singer is the William Blake of our time.

You dont find songwriters who are brilliant lyricists too often, certainly nothing so poetically, philosphically reflective as this:

"Some will never know"

We all alone held on to hands now sallowed
Read in, align, with arms all out
to open eyes.
You consider me oh so reactionary, but see, all I know is we began below.
The nature of the being is naught to follow, noone to lead.
How humane this He became?
He incite, and He deny, but He all pain from whence it came
We alight, borne aloft. Pariah aflame.

I put that time behind,
He come and He defy.
I put that time behind, what a lie.


Gosh, 15 lines and not one "baby" not one " I love you, I dont love you, I will always love you" etc

or

"Deed's Pride"

No pride in what I didnt create
No pride in what I didnt make happen
Notions posed of them and those
but not what pain came to man for

Moments pass mine eyes
in a light construed as righteous
I question, is it a true fight?

Consequence was telling more back then,
with that destiny that never manifested.
All this backwards thought's stil left,
but "be just and fear not"
I have kept


Also Schubert's "wintereisse" song cycle is easily among the most brilliant of all time.

Also Circle of Dust/celldweller, great songwriting (most of it), absolutely incredible mixing, endlessly detailed and structured layers of electronica with beautifully timed syncopated stops and starts.

I have a bunch more hugely creative lesser knowns but Ill leave it at that. :)
 
Pilgrim I agree and could also list a lot of lesser known genius songwriters (I do however know Scott from Circle of Dust and agree he's a good songwriter), but I've found that in this sort of forum only a few people if any have heard of them, and it defeats the purpose of a discussion. Although those lyrics were nice, without being able to hear the music, your comment is only words with no sound the reader can associate it with. Therefore I try and stick to more well known artists for the sake of discussion.

This discussion could easily turn into the never ending thread "what makes a good song". That one always pisses me off because it's all broken down to an individual opinion, and the most successful songs usually tend to be those by pop bands and often weak and lacking substance.
 
Mission accomplished so far

I posted this thread to get some opinions on great songwriters. For example, Aaron gave me a great idea to check out Sting. Of course, we heard Sting's hits a thousand times, but now I might check out his other songs that have not received the huge airplay. What I have heard from Aaron, there is more there than just the pop Sting and his Police days.

Rats and etc. have named some possible songwriters to check out such as Jonah Jenkins or Circle of Dust & etc. This is great, I can't wait to expand my subjective horizons whether I find the music to my liking or not.

I left the original thread-starter very general to get different opinions on all types of songwriters and groups. For example: Chopin, Metallica, George Strait, David Bowie, Mozart, Bob Schnieder, Bad Brains, Miles Davis, Cliffie Stone, Enya, Little Richard, or someone in this BBS.
 
Rats, while pouring over the basic rock/pop canon of the last 40 or so years can be worthwhile as everybody is familiar with the music and can discuss it with common language and an awareness of what specifically is being referred to,,, I think its important to expand people's horizons and introduce them to groups and genres that are not typicaly seen as producing any great songwriters. Circle of dust for one should have been much more successful than they were as there is just about zero competition in that arena. Vey few artists in electronica, industrial, drum n bass, etc are writing actual songs (and those who are wouldnt know how to introduce a key change or a melody with more the 3 notes in a song if their life depended on it, though there are exceptions) and as anybody who has ever sat down to create some loops (from scratch, not prefab) knows that its alot easier to put loops togeather, especialy when there are no unusual key changes, no time or beat change issues, (just age old considerations like- does this rif/bassline follow that?) AND no vocal track... than it is to put words to melody to music.

I think that in the interests of moving music forward there needs to be a comprehensive awareness of where music is now and whats going on now and what could be going on now that is not going on now. That includes all the lesser knowns doing interesting things. Instead of retreading the past and endlessly imitating great music of 10, 20 and 30 years ago which is what seems to be happening now all over the country and world for that matter and everytime I go out to hear new bands in NYC.
 
you guys are sure getting worked up over some one elses quandry.sort of reminds me of monty python.some one was talking about john prine earlier.he's great.in my opinion.i didn't think any of you guys knew anything about the blues.now i know you don't.the blues originated in brentwood,iowa,by a white guy with the name of heywood blues.the native american indians,mostly the wanadancea tribe,carried it eastward where it was eventiually heard by john philip sousa,and he introduced it to his public.to make a long story short ,willie nelson eventually split the blues into two groups,rap and techno,and thats where all of the music in the world came from.
i excell in chemestry too.

bad spellers of the world untie.
 
Rats:

It's interesting that you included Thurston Moore on your list. I used to think that he was the creative center of Sonic Youth. Having seen the band live a few times, I'm generally left with the feeling that Renaldo/Shelley are the real band with husband and wife pair of goofs making noise out in front. I've had very limited exposure to Dim Stars, so I can't speak too much about that.

I realize the Moore's do most of the songwriting, and they can be lyrically interesting. But I can't help this mental picture of Renaldo and Shelley looking at each other and rolling their eyes every time Kim or Thurston "writes" a song.

In a sense, that's what's interesting about them as a band, though. They seem like they could come unglued at any time. Is that a facet of songwriting or band dynamic?
 
Lazy: listen to Thurston Moore's "psychic hearts" LP and tell me that.

Pilgrim: Circle of Dust was ceratinly an electronic masterpiece, and really should have gotten more attention than it did. I think the remastering of the Circle of Dust was good, but the Brainchild LP should have been left alone, especially since it was originally released under the original band's name. Scott could have done better by writing new material. I guess a portion of the reason it lacked it's commercial success may have been due to the religious lyrical content. The majority of the people who dig that style of music don't want to be preached to. If anything the opposite. In that market you're competing with Trent Reznor, Nivek Ogre, Cevin Key, Allen Jourgensen, Rieflen, and the like. I do think Argyle Park should have been much more successful than it was, and it might have been if it were marketed better.

The problem with great music in todays society is that only a small portion of it gets scooped up to get into the record biz meat grinder process to get force fed to the public in the commercial radio circuit. The rest goes silent, only to be heard maybe in the clubs, public radio, or college radio. If you're real good word of mouth may get you a little more exposure. Moby's current success is purely due to selling of every one of his songs from his latest LP to be used in commercials. Screw it, why not: no one would give him air time because he didn't fit into their progamming format! A lot of bands are doing that more, and I think it's a great idea.
It would be nice to hear some of the great new NYC music like the Strokes get some notice.

jimini: The rap and techno popes of the blues first got their holy sacraments from the folk bluegrass punkers of Rotterdam. You really need to check your history books.
 
..

Finger Eleven
Alien Antfarm
Trent Reznor (nine inch nails)
Dream Theater
Alice In Chains
Pennywise

(Trent Reznor in my mind is the most brilliant songwriter and mixer ever).
 
Alice and Chains....Dream Theater...perhaps....trent reznor?? IMHO, I think songs like "the perfect drug" (if thats what its called) disqualify him with transitions and climaxes that dont work. What was that song that was on the radio 4 months ago? "yooooouuu and me, we're in this togeather nooooooww" or something like that, the absolute worst transition into a chorus I have heard on a professional medium (92.3 K rock in NYC). Period. His songwriting is not consistent, especially on the last record. He seems to have run out of inspiration. As far as mixing and putting togeather original and brilliant soundscapes though- the humming synth sounds in the background on "piggy", "eraser" and other songs on that record are great and totally broke open the imagination of industrial music, previously confined to either depeche mode synth sounds or garage door opening sounds looped over a monotonous dance beat. He destroys any DJ-rockstar-wannabe out there in that realm but you cant really compare guys like paul okenfeld and co. to guys like trent reznot who play instruments and write songs. I know, I know, ACID is an instrument too. :)

BTW, Dream Theater before and after Kevin Moore left is clearly not the same and you get an idea of who was responsible for the beautiful melodies and seemless transitioning. Allow me a prediction, barring kevin rejoining the band, the best music of the bands discography was already in stores in late '94, the rest is mostly mediocre commentary.
 
Good songwriters

I see a long list of names but not my favorite......Has anyone ever heard of Diane Warren??
 
Whew JuSumPilgrim, you're nuts. Maybe your opinion outweighs that of the huge amount of INCREDIBLY respected musicians who think he is brilliant in every sense of the word. You are entitled to your opinion.

Jake
 
a lot of words

Hello!

Well. This is a little confusing. Are we talking about arranging/composing/performing/music/lyrics/bands/songs? Also, are we SURE that some people named here actually wrote the songs we think they did? I think it is SUCH a broad question that it is unlikely to provide MUCH info. :) I also think that a good songwriter has effect not only on the people who listen to his/her stuff, but also on the industry... shifting or unsettling concepts a little.

HOWEVER here are some additions off the top of my head (with reasons I think qualify people).

Michael Stipe (Lyrics. Believe it or not, I think I understand them!)
Bill Berry (I think he was the key person alongside Stipe for R.E.M.s great songs... not many people know how many songs HE wrote, and how much he contributed musically. A loss.)
Nicky Wire (and other Manic Street Preacher lyricists!)
James Dean Bradfield (ever listened to the Manic Street Preachers?)
Brad Roberts (Love his lyrics... and he writes with a kind of non-chalance that I really like)
Frank Zappa (Ha! For being courageous! Weird Al could learn a thing or two!)
Sheryl Crow (writes some awesome songs!)
Sting!!! (one of the few musicians that I HAVE to meet in my career at some stage :) )
PJ Harvey (a little underrated, no?)
Marilyn Manson (The Band. Only for Antichrist Superstar... one of my fav albums of all time.)
Eddie Vedder (listen to 'Vs.', Pearl Jams 2nd (and possibly best) album, as well as 'Vitalogy', their 3rd)
Thom Yorke (lyrics. honest.)
The Rest of Radiohead (not afraid to experiment)
David Byrne (for being a very clever oddball, and writing cool stuff!)
The Chili Peppers (diverse repetoire. great musos)
Lenny Kravitz (great muso... though the new single is REALLY disappointing!)

I'll leave it there for now. I imagine that 90% of the people here will be remembered in 20 years time (if that is the official measure of a great songwriter), if they aren't being remembered already! I have left out the ones already mentioned, though I may have missed a couple.

There are many many more! I am tempted to include Reznor, I am getting into a bit of NIN and think he is a talented man. The stuff is not meant to provide a standard musical experience. It is there to unsettle us, I think. For that reason, attacking "the perfect drug" for being impotent is not accurate. it is potent because, in an arena of rock singles that REALLY abuse and mock general dynamics flow (soft verse. loud chorus.) in a song, it is unusual! I like.

This list is MASSIVE... and I don't think useful for statistical purposes. As a passing acknowledgement of peoples work it is nice though :)

nS
 
Which 'RESPECTED" musicians would you be refering to exactly? Think for yourself dude,,, Respected musicians have thought little of many musicians and composers who turned out to change the direction of music in the long run and conversely have thought much of many who never amounted to anything in the long run. There have been thousands of celebrated musicians/songwriters/singers who died in anonymity. :)
 
When I said that, I didn't mean "Since So-And-So likes him he has to be good". I am one of the biggest NIN fans I have ever known of. I own 2 copies of every CD (one in shrink wrap), including all imports (i think all, occasionally i see a new one, and i'm like wha the fuck? whered that come from, i have like 150), and alternate printings (you'd be surprised of the amount of those, strange printings with different colors and such). Trent is one of the most amazingly moving songwriters I have ever heard.

I don't need to name names, if you really care (which you apparently don't, no offense), theres many places you can find out (articles, interviews). You are completely entitled to your opinion on his songrwiting, I was just using some experienced and known songwriters to back my own opionion up. I assume you'd trust their judgement over mine.

Jake
 
I hear that, Jake. If NIN moves you then keep on keepin on. Like I said in my first post, he has had his share of brilliant moments. However, his brilliance has more to do with writing, arranging music and editing sound than writing songs. Not that this is a measure of all things but if you ditill his songs to their bare essentials...vocal melody, chord progression and time...they dont translate the way alice in chains' songs do...for instance.

Not to be arrogant or anything but I trust my ears not any general consensus among "respected" musicians.
 
I getcha. Just saying that if you had to trust someones opinion, I assume you'd choose Bowie's over mine. At least you know SOMETHING about Bowie.

Jake
 
The greatest all-around songwriter EVER is Irving Berlin.

It would take me all day to list the pile of hit songs this man wrote.
He did it all.... music, lyrics, and melody.
The man was a musical genius.

The best songwriting team ever would be a tie, between.....

Lennon & McCartney (obviously)

-and-

Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek of The Doors

Think about it....

Riders On The Storm
The End
Break On Through
Roadhouse Blues
Love Me Two Times
L.A. Woman
Touch Me

Manzarek is a musical genius, and Jim Morrison was perhaps the best lyricist that ever put words on paper.

I noticed that several people mentioned Neil Young.

Hmmmm.....
I seem to remember 3 guys named David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash who were all known to jot down a song or two.... collectively AND as independent artists.

How about that obscure duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagan.... members of a little-known band called Steely Dan? I believe they wrote about a dozen great albums filled with a barrage of hits dating back to about 1971. A clever mixture of Jazz, Rock, and Blues rolled together in a sound that is all their own.
Think about it....
Have you ever heard another band that has even remotely copied their sound?

I didn't think so.
 
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